At the University of South Florida, more than half of the 71 women on the cross-country roster failed to run a race in 2009. Asked about it, a few laughed and said they did not know they were on the team.

At Marshall University, the women’s tennis coach recently invited three freshmen onto the team even though he knew they were not good enough to practice against his scholarship athletes, let alone compete. They could come to practice whenever they liked, he told them, and would not have to travel with the team.

At Cornell, only when the 34 fencers on the women’s team take off their protective masks at practice does it become clear that 15 of them are men. Texas A&M and Duke are among the elite women’s basketball teams that also take advantage of a federal loophole that allows them to report male practice players as female participants.

Pretty good example of why using proportionality is a ridiculous way to quantify Title IX compliance.

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That's why there's two other prongs in the three-prong test of compliance.

The monkey wrench is football. Women's squads are forced to make up for the burden of an 85-full-scholarship-player football roster. It's cheaper for schools to pack the track roster than to add another women's sport.

I wish the NCAA would grow a pair and limit football scholarships to, say, 25. That would provide more balance to the sport -- all the guy would be backups at Alabama would go to, say, Kentucky and create more teams that are better, thereby creating more interest. This would also make the Division II product better.

DKPHXF ... Yes, just ask the NCAA to take away from what they're providing to their primary source of revenue. So many people think college athletes should be paid (I don't), and you're saying "Take funding away from the primary sport that funds all others." Kids will be as likely to go to other sports as other schools, and they won't make a college any money on a track scholarship. Your solution is to dilute the product, which costs cuts, among other things.

People would still show up to watch college football, regardless of how many scholarship athletes there are on the team. They went from 100 down to 85 and the game survived.

An NFL team has 53 plus eight on the practice squad. That's 61. Yes, I know college is a whole different thing. So what? How come an NFL team can play 16 games with 53 (or 61) guys and a college team needs 85 to play 12 games?

And to look at this a totally different way, maybe the NFL should man up and use some of its $9 billion to create its own minor league instead of relying on the NCAA. How come it's OK for baseball to run its own minor league system, but the NFL and NBA insist on relying on colleges. If anything perpetuates college sports as we know them, it's that.

I never understood why Title IX couldn't be carried over to other extra-curricular activities like the arts - I figure there are plenty of musicians and actresses who are more devoted to their craft than some of the people that fill out rosters in female sports.
I always thought the key word was "opportunity" not "roster spot."

One of the NYT's commenters suggests that perhaps some of the Title IX money could be spent on dance programs, or hiking or any other thing for which actual female students might have interest rather than stacking programs or creating bowling teams in order to foster 60/40 compliance.

DKPHXF ... Yes, just ask the NCAA to take away from what they're providing to their primary source of revenue. So many people think college athletes should be paid (I don't), and you're saying "Take funding away from the primary sport that funds all others." Kids will be as likely to go to other sports as other schools, and they won't make a college any money on a track scholarship. Your solution is to dilute the product, which costs cuts, among other things.

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I'm pretty certain boosters at Alabama would still love the Crimson Tide and give lavishly. And perhaps boosters at Kentucky would be happy to provide money to the school with a better product on the field. Television rights won't change because people would still love watching games. And if they ever went to a playoff system (i.e. took control of their most profitable product), they could easily generate a heckuva a lot more money.

This then raises the central point. Schools pay hundreds of thousands for directional schools from Louisiana to play a game. They also pay coaches upwards of $4 million, hundreds of thousands on recruiting and millions on football stadium renovations, etc. If funding other sports through football were so important, why would Cal cut baseball one or two years after spending $320 million on football stadium renovations?

Why should one sport have enough money to field four different sets of offenses and defenses while baseball only gets 10-ish scholarships and basketball 11?